collaboration

Surajit Sarkar discussed his work with the A Deep Fried Jam trio and the community art initiative in India the Catapult Arts Caravan in relation to the media consumption in India.

Surajit Sarkar lives in New Delhi, India. He has held positions as varied as photocopier salesman, bank officer, primary school teacher and developer of curriculum for primary school children and teachers alike. Since 1991, he has worked with video, at first in mainstream television writing and directing a highly successful weekly science & tech program on Indian national TV network. He moved to documentary film making, and has worked on subjects ranging from agriculture, education and the uneven costs of ‘development’. A number of these have been recognized nationally and internationally and have won prizes in film festivals in India and abroad.

I am part of a group of CUNY faculty members, researchers and doctoral students affiliated with the CUNY Graduate Center’s Digital Media Studies Group, that has organized The Digital University, an all-day conference on Wednesday, April 21, 2010, at the CUNY Graduate Center in midtown Manhattan.

Bringing together an invited group of media practitioners, academic publishers, digital content developers and academics, the conference is designed to assess the impact of digital media on academic work and academic policy and authority.

The eteam (Franziska Lamprecht and Hajoe Moderegger) for Upgrade! New York’s August 2007 event.

eteam discussed the construction of alternate realities via audience participation (intentional or unintentional) within their various projects. In addition, a special guest and a performance/game set the scene for vibrant dialogue.

At the previous Upgrade! New York gathering, writer/theorist Clay Shirky suggested that the most successful open source collaborations are those that use recipe-like methods to share information. In order to explore this idea further, this month’s discussion examined recipes, instructions, and open source collaboration. Participants included Eyebeam residents Rebecca Bray and Britta Riley, artist/writer/activist Marisa Jahn, and Instructables community manager Billy Gordon. Presentations by all participants were followed by a discussion and Q&A.

My online collaborators Mushon-Zer Aviv and Jonah Bossewitch and I are leading off a day of workshops on online collaboration. I love that Jonah and I will be meeting in person for the first time, and that Mushon will be joining us via Skype. How online-collaborative is that!

We have just uploaded the video documentation for one of the most interesting Upgrade events we had in the past year with Biella Coleman and Zach Lieberman discussing the tensions within the Free Software / Open Source world(s?) on the meaning of “free”. It explores the tensions between ethics and pragmatics, between “to free” and “to open”, between means and ends. If you’re interested in these issues I really recommend you check it out: